immigration to israel from arab lands

Immigration to Israel from Arab lands is the migration, both forced and voluntary, in modern times by the primarily Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, who lived in Arab lands since well before the advent and spread of Islam and who subsequently moved to the modern State of Israel.

History of Jews in Arab lands

Jews have lived in what are now Arab and Muslim states since the times of the Babylonian captivity (597 BCE), about 2,600 years ago. After the rise of Islam in these lands, except for intermittent periods Jews, along with Christians and Zoroastrians, had the legal status of Dhimmis: second-class citizens who received some measure of rights and tolerance in exchange for payment of jizya poll tax, which gave other benefits, such as exemption from military service. Jews were typically subjected to some of the following restrictions, to varying degrees: to live in segregated quarters, wear distinctive clothing, and show public subservience to Muslims. They sometimes attained high positions in government, notably as viziers and physicians. Jewish communities, like Christian ones, were typically constituted as semi-autonomous entities managed by their own laws and leadership, who carried the responsibility for the community towards the Muslim rulers. Proselytizing by non-Muslims was forbidden. In 1945 there were nearly 900,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000. In some Arab states, such as Libya (which was once nearly 5 percent Jewish), the Jewish community no longer exists; in other Arab countries, only a few hundred Jews remain.

Jews flee Arab states

Beginning in the late 19th century, the Zionist movement led to an immigration of Jews to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, later the British Mandate of Palestine. Tensions arose between these immigrants and the Palestinian Arabs; Pan-Arabism led to the Palestinian side of this conflict being taken up by other Arabs, including (from 1945) the Arab League. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Palestinian exodus, and the creation of the state of Israel, some Arab governments promulgated edicts that removed Jews from public service and barred them from entering universities, traveling abroad, or buying and selling property. As a result, most of the longstanding Middle Eastern Jewish communities came to an end in the 1940s and early 1950s. Such harsh laws caused more than 100,000 Iraqi Jews to emigrate to Israel in 1951 in an airlift known as Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. That same year, the Iraqi parliament passed the Deprivation of Stateless Jews of Their Property Law aimed at Jews who had renounced their citizenship, a pre-condition for emigration. A series of bombings of Jewish institutions and more laws that limited their freedom persuaded the remaining 6,000 Iraqi Jews to leave in the early 1950s. As a result, an estimated 300,000 Iraqi Jews and their descendants now live in Israel, and 40,000 elsewhere. Most North African Jews left substantially later, in the wake of these countries' independence and of the Six Day War; thus most Jews in Algeria, for instance, left in 1962. Jews from these countries mainly went to France and Israel.

Lavon Affair

In 1954 the Israeli government was discovered to have carried out the bombing of several American targets in Egypt, and attempted to place the blame on Arab terrorists. Some historians have noted that this episode, known as the Lavon Affair, proves that the Israeli government may have had some role in stoking up fears within Jewish communities in Arab lands in order to encourage involuntary immigration (Aliyah in Hebrew) to Israel. While this may be so, there is no denying the political landscape in the entire Middle East at the time, when all Arab countries experienced a marked rise of Arab nationalism, heightened anti-Semitism during World War II and widespread anger at the establishment of the State of Israel. Arab dictatorships have also been accused of scapegoating their Jewish population groups, agitating for their emigration and then confiscating much of the left-behind property. Former Israeli internal security minister Moshe Shahal has put forth estimates that today these properties are valued at thirty billion US dollars, (see The Scribe in the External links section below for more information on that claim.)

Absorbing Jewish refugees

Of the nearly 900,000 Jewish refugees, approximately 600,000 were absorbed by Israel; the remainder went to Europe and the Americas. Today, almost half of Israel's Jewish citizens are the original refugees and their descendants, mostly Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Temani Jews. These refugees were forced to abandon virtually all of their property, especially as they fled from the most hostile countries: Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees were temporarily settled in the numerous tent cities called Maabarot in Hebrew. Their population was gradually absorbed and integrated into the Israeli society, a substantial logistical achievement, without help from the United Nations. The Maabarot existed until 1958.

Jewish refugee advocacy groups

There are a number of advocacy groups concerned with Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries

The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) was founded in 1975. According to its website, it was founded

in Paris by several leaders of immigrants' associations and communities of Jews from Arab countries living in Israel and the Diaspora. It was first headed by Mordechai Ben-Porat, a former Israeli cabinet minister and Knesset member and by Leon Tamman of blessed memory, one of the leaders of 'World Sephardi Jewry'. The organization's purposes were, at that time, two-fold: To work to relieve the distress of the Jews remaining in Arab countries who suffered from persecution, imprisonment and executions, and to react to the overwhelming importance given to the issue of the Palestinian refugees in world public opinion. WOJAC's founders saw the organization as one which would do what no other organization or government entity was doing at the time: it would raise the forgotten issue of the Jews who had been forced to leave Arab countries and to abandon all their communal and private property.

WOJAC is an international, non-profit organization, associated with the United Nations Department of Public Information as a non-governmental organization.

Justice for Jews from Arab countries

According to their website:

There exists a moral imperative to ensure that justice for Jews from Arab countries assumes its rightful place on the international political and judicial agenda and that their rights be secured as a matter of law and equity. 'Justice for Jews from Arab Countries' is being created with the following objectives: i) To chronicle the experience and document the legitimate claims of Jews displaced from Arab countries. ii) To educate public opinion on the causes and plight of Jews who were displaced from Arab countries; and ii) To advocate for, and secure rights and redress, for Jews from Arab countries who suffered as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa organization

According to the Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) website:

JIMENA's mission is to advocate and educate about the history and plight of the Jews indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. Our core goals are: To tell our story. The world must know about our plight as former refugees from Arab countries. We were victims of mass violations of human rights, and justice calls for our story to be told, and our rights addressed. To reestablish historical context. Our story must be returned to the narrative of the modern Middle East from which it has been erased. To help bring about a just solution to the Middle East crisis. In the absence of truth and justice, there can be no reconciliation, without which there can be no just, lasting peace between and among all peoples of the region.